Warning PPC Click Fraud Bots

[Linda Buquet]

Advertiser warning. The baddies have a new game. The SearchEngineWatch Blog covers the story: New Click Fraud Bot Exploiting 34,000 PCs & Hundreds Of Advertisers based on a recent report from Net Security.org.

"Pay Per Click" fraud botnet discovered - "PandaLabs has detected a network of computers infected with the bot Clickbot.A, which is being used to defraud ‘pay per click’ systems, registering clicks automatically and providing lucrative returns for the creators. According to the data collected so far, the scam is exploiting a global network comprising more than 34,000 zombie computers (those infected by the bot)."

[Eminem]

What will the Main Ad networks do? Stop the ad system for a while till this is sorted? This is indeed a dangerous thing if your site is making great $$$$ from a particular Publishing Network. I would suggest removing the ads for particular amount of time.

However, they seem to go undetected...will be really interesting hwo the networks deal with it.

[KLB]

I suspect these bot networks are set up to provide clicks only on certain websites to benefit those site's owners. It shouldn't be that hard to reverse engineer the bots on some infected machines to determine who is benefiting from the clicks. As they say all that needs to be done is follow the money trail. Those bot networks are probably working for the same spammers who create networks of hundreds of scrapper sites.

[Eminem]

True,

However, I am not sure if they know the particular sites which are ONLY getting clicks from that bot. If they get to know that, there is a good chance that they can be caught. Also, if it's in people's PCs, are Adware/Spyware detectors detecting them?

[KLB]

Properly done with a large enough website network and a large enough bot network and enough AdSense accounts, such activity could be hard for Google to detect if done properly.

Whether or not adware/spyware detectors detect such infestations will depend upon how up to date such detectors are and how sneaky these zombie programs are. Still there are millions of improperly protected computers attached to the Internet, so for the operators of these zombie networks such security programs don't pose a big threat.